The 5th Regional Coordination Meeting of the ScienTI Network, held in Cartagena das Indias, in Colombia, from July 26-28, 2006, registered historical advances for the future of the network. A cooperation agreement among the participating institutions was approved, together with a set of recommendations that confirm the aim of the Network to promote interoperability of national directories of CV data of researchers, research groups and institutions to support the management of science, technology and innovation. COLCIENCIAS and BIREME/PAHO/WHO - the Executive Secretariat of the Network - organized the event with the support of the OAS. COLCIENCIAS was elected to be the next Executive Secretariat of the Network and it will be in charge of the 6th Regional Coordination Meeting of the ScienTI Network, during the CRICS8read the full article

With the collaboration of the Ministry of Health and the PAHO Representative in Equator, BIREME/PAHO/WHO held two training courses on bibliographic control and indexing of scientific and technical literature on health within the Virtual Health Library (VHL) context, in Quito, from July 24 to August 4, 2006. The LILACS methodology and the software LILDBI - web version (LILDBI-Web) were used. The representatives of the institutions that cooperate with the VHL Network in Equator, Chile, Paraguay and Venezuela participated in the national and international coursesread the full article

Management of scientific information has become an increasingly complex and challenging task in a world where there are billions of web pages and millions of scientific articles. If we consider, on the one hand, the growing amount if information, and on the other hand the high degree of ambiguity of the terminology used to describe search results, how can the information found in texts be treated and retrieved efficiently. It is paramount to overcome these challenges in order to provide scientists with better conditions to manage the time required to produce science. In a visit to BIREME/PAHO/WHO, in the beginning of August, 2006, Barend Mons, from the Erasmus Medical Center, University of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, shared possible solutionsread the full article

Aimed to present a series of applications developed to manage and automate the operation of services of libraries, documentation centers and museums, Guilda Ascencio, an expert in information systems based on the ISIS platform came to BIREME/PAHO/WHO, on July 18, 2006, to present and discuss about applications and prospects of use at the VHL. The applications use the WWWISIS basic software designed by BIREME. In a meeting held in May, at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris, a group of specialists approved the proposal put forward by BIREME regarding the development of a new networked ISIS-based platform using free softwareread the full article

On August 7, 2006, the UNIFESP signed an agreement to have a 10-km aerial optical fiber network. The mayor of Sao Paulo, Gilberto Kassab, and authorities of the Eletropaulo Telecom took part in the meeting. The installation of this network will enable increasing data exchange speed at the UNIFESP campus, favoring teaching activities and scientific production; moreover, it will expedite services at the Hospital Sao Paulo and its outpatients clinics, and promote efficient access to scientific and technical information, operated at the Virtual Health Library (VHL), by BIREME/PAHO/WHO, located in the University campus
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The BVS Agenda is an application developed by BIREME/PAHO/WHO to manage and publish an agenda via web, allowing the creation of a program of an event organized by type or date, or activities and people involved. The application automates the publication of proceedings from conferences, seminars, tutorials, congresses and courses on the Internet. BIREME has improved the VHL Agenda in the past year and provides a standard version for free download to VHL Network institutions, which have contributed to assess and provide suggestions to improve the application. A course oriented to customization of the VHL Agenda, developed by the DGI Unit at BIREME is under experimental phase. This activity is also part of the initiative to consolidate a network of interface developers for the VHL in Latin America and the Caribbean
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